On Tuesday, March 21, Uganda’s parliament overwhelmingly voted to further trample on the human rights of gays within its borders. The African country’s new anti-gay bill seeks to “prohibit and penalize homosexual behavior” and “the promotion of homosexuality” altogether.
The new anti-gay legislation, triumphant over two courageous opposing votes, makes it illegal to identify as anything other than heterosexual, with punishments including prolonged imprisonment and even death in some cases. LGBTQ activist groups are to be prosecuted under the bill; support for LGTBQ rights through media, books, magazines, the internet, etc., is strictly prohibited and punishable.
Uganda’s parliament hails the bill as a moral win for the people. “Congratulations,” declared Uganda’s Speaker of Parliament following the body’s vote. “Whatever we are doing, we are doing it for the people of Uganda.”
“Homosexuality is a human wrong that can’t be hidden in rights,” tweeted parliament member Asuman Basalirwa.
This anti-gay policy is not new to Uganda or Africa. More than 30 African countries have for some time prohibited homosexuality with the threat of severe punishment.
The continent, far from being a flourishing land of freedom, equality, and democracy, is the theater of a tragedy unfolding before our eyes. Spearheaded by misguided and hypocritical religious zealots, Uganda and other African states continue their crusade against gay rights, blatantly rejecting the most basic tenets of the UN Charter by subjecting their people to cruel discrimination.
“One of the most extreme features of this new bill,” Human Rights Watch researcher Oryem Nyeko said, “is that it criminalizes people simply for being who they are as well as further infringing on the rights to privacy and freedoms of expression and association that are already compromised in the country.”
This attack on the fundamental human right to freedom of expression and the pursuit of happiness creates an atmosphere of fear. Fear through blackmail has become a central part of Ugandan society. “People are receiving calls that ‘if you don’t give me money, I will report that you are gay,’” an activist told the BBC.
This fear of exposure and punishment is strikingly like the Salem Witch Trials in the 17th century, in which countless innocents, including young girls of just five years, were put to death merely because of accusations of witchcraft.
Despite all this, some in the West don’t care.
“Their country, their culture, their laws,” declared a Twitter user with a shrug emoji in response to the bill.
Wrong. Countless others followed suit, spewing sentiments of cultural relativism, a philosophy that asserts that right and wrong are rooted not in universal principles of natural law but result from the beliefs of a given culture.
Human rights, in this view, are interpreted differently all over the world, and that is okay.
“If Uganda wishes to oppress its people, that’s their prerogative” seems to be a common position that screeches out of social media in defense of despotic parliaments.
Such thinking is just wrong. Human rights, as John F. Kennedy declared, “come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” They are sacred and universal and oblige the observance of all.
The petty tyrants in the Ugandan parliament have no more authority to deprive the people of their natural rights than they do the authority to deprive the world of Newton’s laws of physics.
Human rights, being found in the fabric of nature itself, are no less discernible or important than the law of universal gravitation.
Government, as the Enlightenment thinkers declared, is instituted for one general purpose: to secure and perpetuate the natural rights of the people, which includes freedom of expression and the pursuit of safety and happiness.
This fundamental notion guided the world out of the cold darkness of absolutist kings and into the warm light of self-government.
When a “democratic” government shirks from its first duty, when its authority is aimed instead at riveting chains of discrimination on its people, it degenerates into an unholy and unnatural thing: an elected despotism.
Government exists to protect people from the very laws that Uganda’s parliament continues to pass. A government without respect for human rights has no legitimate authority to govern anyone. As Cicero wrote, “What is a state but a community of [and for] rights?”
Uganda’s government, by again trampling on the rights of its people, continues to show the world that it is unfree and unenlightened. Uganda is an archaic despotism disguised as a modern democracy.
Gay rights are human rights. Human rights are natural rights. Natural rights are universal and existed long before parliaments and borders.
Dakoda Pettigrew